Here is my box. The outside is red; the inside blue velvet. It is a big box, and a small box. Big when I crawl inside; small when I hide it away. This kind of box is not for a rainy day. Nor is it suspended between soft oblivion and wakefullness. There is no special time to take it out. Nor is it usually voluntary. It comes forward out of myself, braying and screaming. Roaring to the silent world of injustice. And it hurts. Hurts so terribly; so sweetly.
The things I place in this box are the things that, while noone else sees them, are the gifts of my soul. The wet, clumsy peices of soul that should slough off when that red lid is removed.
It smells. It smells of old and musty things. Things that have sat in that box for years. Things that were placed in the box to mould and rot; grey and brown puddles of infection. It smells of flowers in a garden much older than the small face pressed into them. It smells of mornings climbing trees and running through tall, wet grass. Beneath all those smells is the scent of honey and expensive powder perfume; joy. Pure joy. Innocent of the drone of society.
This box, while constructed originally from the heart of a small child to protect herself from those who would take those small joys from her, now has only one purpose. To catch the tears, and muffle the sobs, of someone bigger. Someone who needed a place to be free. Needed a place to hide from the frantic drone of society. Needed a place to clawl into, as a small child, that would not fall apart with a wash of salty anguish.